Giving Back

Just as its name implies, the SnotBot drone deals with a pretty disgusting thing: specifically, whale snot. Before you get grossed out and move on, it’s worth hearing how the Ocean Alliance uses the mucous collected by SnotBot to gather whale genetic information and monitor health and wellness. In this video, the Roswell Flight Crew […]

Every fall, pods of enormous humpback whales make their way towards Hawaii, where they can ride out the winter in warm waters of NOAA’s Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. For centuries humans have watched this noble migration with awe and wonder. But today, an ever-growing number of these amazing animals are finding themselves […]

Ads after 2 posts

Ads after 4 posts

Flying the Ptarmigan hexacopter in challenging conditions Springtime in northern Alaska is the right time for a whale hunt. Vast sheets of sea ice crumble together into huge masses that grind into the ocean floor, anchoring it for a time. To get to open water to hunt whales, Inupiat whaling crews will break miles of […]

Looking through the Trees When an autistic 11-year-old on his bike went missing with his dad’s rifle this past August, Alaska State Troopers had a problem. They couldn’t activate their normal search-and-rescue protocols because a gun was involved; they didn’t want to take a chance of putting search crews in danger. They instead called the […]

Ads after 2 posts

Ads after 4 posts

South Africa’s Super Drone Advanced drones armed with double-barrel dart guns—that sounds like a scifi movie if ever I heard one. But it’s true—and not in a sinister way. In fact, such helpful drones could actually be coming to the United States very soon. The aptly named DartGun is the latest development from Haevic, a […]

Just a quick peek at a fantastic article on flying a drone in Antarctica. Adventure photographer and drone pilot Gavin Garrison talks about the challenges of flying over an iceberg-laden waters. Here is a little excerpt from that article that will appear in the March issue of RotorDrone Magazine. In late 2016, I was driving north […]

Ads after 2 posts

Ads after 4 posts

(Photo by Brent Paull) The beach was clear of ice and snow, and the gray rocks and gravel were drying in the warm sun. Nearby grass was showing hints of green, early for this Alaska spring. Drifting on its back in Kachemak Bay, near the town of Homer, Alaska, a sea otter ate morsels of […]

Here is a great story from Air & Space Magazine (July 2015) By mark Betancourt. Sentinels in the sky are hunting the poachers. Biologists predict that within 10 years, rhinos and elephants could be extinct in the African wild because of poaching. Wildlife rangers patrolling millions of acres of land are mostly helpless to stop […]

Ads after 2 posts

Ads after 4 posts

It’s perfectly clear — rotordrones and multirotor craft are here to stay. Turn on the TV and in no time you’ll see news mentions discussing the pros and cons of this still- evolving technology. Rotordrones and various other multirotor designs are a curiosity for most folks and too often are shown in a negative light. […]

Over the past seven days, Precision Integrated Programs has supported the University of Alaska Fairbanks significantly in conducting ScanEagle flight missions to assist authorities in responding to the massive Funny River Fire near Kenai, Alaska. By Memorial Day the fire had spread to over 120,000 acres. The University of Alaska formally requested support from […]